I think I’m getting soft.
I’m beginning to think that I’m not the kid I used to be. One sure indication of that is the realization that I don’t really like to sleep on the ground any more. Over the years I’ve slept on the ground in more places than most people have been. The year after I got out of the army was spent kicking around Europe in a VW Beetle I bought in Germany, along with a pup tent from the PX and a sleeping bag and air mattress that the army was nice enough to lose track of. I didn’t live in the tent, but I had a limited amount of money, and when it was gone I was going home, so I wanted to make it last. Camping was a good way to do that, especially at the beaches, where you could camp right by the water, and you could meet a lot more people in a campground than you ever could at a hotel. During the two summers I spent experiencing Europe I stayed at beaches on the Mediterranean from Greece to Gibraltar, and all the way to Denmark on the North Sea, staying in campgrounds by the beach for much of the time. I met and made friends with people from all over the continent and many of them invited me to visit and stay with them if I came to their city or town. I took a lot of them up on it. All in all, it was a great year. I got to see Europe in a way I never could as a tourist and got to know a lot of great people along the way, and stayed in touch with many of them for years.
When I came home I still had the travel bug, only now I wanted to see this country. In Europe the most impressive sites are the cities or other man-made structures. In America the most impressive sites are the natural wonders that nature has provided us with, and I wanted to see it all. Europe has the Alps, and they are really something to see. I still remember my first look at them; we were driving down from Munich, and we came around a bend and there was the Zugspitz, the highest peak in Germany. It was December and it was covered in snow; it was quite a sight. I think everyone remembers the first look at the Alps. But we have the Grand Tetons, a smaller version of the Alps, as well as Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and so many more incredible natural wonders, and I wanted to see them all. And I wanted the photographs to remember them by. Many of those photos adorn my walls today.
Most people see these sites from a scenic overlook set up by the park service and never get more than a few feet from their car. To really experience these places you have to get into the back country to see the out of the way sites most people never see. That was where I wanted to be. To get there you need to put everything you need in a backpack and start walking. It is worth the effort to get to these places that few even know about.
I guess my favorite place to explore is the Grand Canyon. It is so big and varied and rich with the history of time that you cannot help but be awestruck every time you see it. The view changes constantly as you descend from the rim, with each turn of the trail revealing a new and more impressive view of the Canyon that you could never see from the top. All around you the canyon walls reveal hundreds of millions of years of the geological history of the planet.
On a moonless night the canyon walls block any light from the rim. You can lie on the ground in your bag in almost total darkness and look up through the clearest air at a sky filled with more stars than you have ever seen. Light from the sun coming from the far side of the planet reflects off the skin of satellites far out in space, allowing you to watch them as they travel across the sky.
I haven’t slept on the ground in years. I still keep a backpack equipped with everything I need for a short trip, but it hasn’t been used in awhile. These days, after a day of trekking around the mountains with my dog, I like to come back to a room or cabin with a soft bed, a hot shower, A/C in the summer and heat in the winter, and a TV, preferably with cable. But most of all, I’m hungry, and for me nothing tops off a day of enjoying the great outdoors like a pizza, fresh from the oven and delivered to my room. I have eaten a lot of different foods after a day in the woods, and to be honest they all taste good when you are hungry, but nothing tastes as good as a fresh hot pizza.
I’ll use that backpack again. There are still places I haven’t been that I want to see and experience; places where you can get away from the crowd and go where most people never go, where you can enjoy the quiet and solitude and relax and reflect. And when I return I know that the two things I want most will be a cold beer and a hot pizza.